How committed are you to your atheism?

I know this is a journey, and what I am asking is, where are you on your own personal atheistic stance? Would you considered yourself confirmed, convinced, still doubting, adamant, or still looking over your shoulder at your religious training/indoctrination? Please provide your own favorite adjectives.

I consider myself convinced and adamant about atheism. I feel very strongly about my nonbelief. Too strongly some times.

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On a constant basis I find myself teetering between completely adamant and looking over my shoulder. I am atheist/agnostic, but I grew up in a home that was extremist in the Christian beliefs. You didn't go to hospital if you were sick, you prayed. You didn't stand up for yourself if others hurt you, you prayed. I could go on and on. While I have abandoned that way of life, it's a bit difficult for me to not wonder if I made the right decision. When these thought come up, I remind myself why I decided that life was not right for me. Having a support system for these beliefs will be a great help!

Hear-hear. My stone-headed determination to be who I am has echoed and rebounded all through my 67-years extending from my preschool years, through college and even the US Army. Just as any military force from before the Roman Legions to the 21st century immediately seeks to destroy every individual's personality to remold them into order-obeying fleshbots, I've never knuckled under for the 7-years I served. That's the primary reason I've been self-employed for 85% of my professional career.

The forces of religion from my mom at the very beginning of my sojourn as a self-conscious animal on this beautiful "Blue marble" we call home to the present day I do not allow any to remake me into another holy roller, scripture-spouting, ridiculous fleshbot of another sort, I am ME!

Glad and pleased to have you aboard, now where on our Blue marble do you occupy your space?

I also trust you are part of the 99%, so go and occupy something so we can reclaim our nation and take it back from the holy rollers and corporations. We ALL MUST turn out and vote in 2012 lest they take us all back to the Dark Ages when religion ruled every damn thing.

Pleased indeed to meet another Tarheel atheist; are you native Carolinian as I? Beautiful state from east to west and north to south and I hated to leave it, which I had to do in order to make a living. I could have moved to the Triangle Research Park area but I wanted to get into the marine industry as a hold-over from my Physical Oceanography days with AT&T in Greensboro. My missus and I are both from Eden, we're both old enough to call it Leaksville.

If I may ask, Where in NC are you? I am in Decatur, TX about 34-miles NNW of Fort Worth where I am a participant on the Occupy Fort Worth division of Occupy Wall Street. I encourage you to go fina a local division and join in, 'cause of the Repugnican nut cases running in 1012 manage to win, we're all screwed.

Purely on sentimental, emotional and physical comfort reasons I much prefer North Carolina. Another very important link is of course family. My 89-y-o mom still resides in Eden and she is in excellent health, mentally as sharp as I've ever known her to be, but physically hindered by arthritic knees from spending 32-years on concrete floors at the DuPont plant, now closed and destroyed, in Martinsville, VA.

I know Asheville well and a little about Old Fort and I'm pleased that a NC homegirl is majoring in physics, well done. I'm a physics nut, nuclear physics especially, and its long and storied history. My library of some 3,000 volumes has a lot of science, physics, evolution, and engineering, but the preponderance is history. I also have a large number of books oon Skepticism, atheism, and critique of religion, which I despise in all of its many weird forms.

I have had an interesting career, due mostly to my short attention span and I' always looking for a new wrinkle in whatever I'm doing at the time. I have patents, now abandoned, and I do a large amount of leading edge work with marine applications of ozone. Have a look @ www.chem-freeozone.com and you'll see some of it. Also, if you like send me your email address @ connectedcowboy@msn.com and I'll send you some ozone specific material that as a physics major I think you'll enjoy.

I have leading edge water treatment systems that I designed and built aboard Research Vessel Knorr and R/V Atlantis of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, as well as several other well known RVs from Scripps institution of Oceanography.

We and indeed America needs smart young people who are not trapped in religion and are not afraid to say so. Also, the Occupy movement needs you and as many friends and like-minded students on the picket lines. Also, make every effort to get as many registered as possible as we'll need every vote to offset those Tea Stained idiots and to most of all prevent another evangelical nutcase out of the Oval Office.

I agree with some of the posters above who say that we don't need to be confirmed or convinced or doubting or adamant about atheism. I understand the sentiment, but I have a hard time semantically digesting the phrase, "I feel strongly about my nonbelief." This language comes from a culture steeped in theism. I find that using this language in reference to atheism makes it seem as though believing in a higher power is the normal, default thing to do (which makes no sense at all).

I tend to agree with the exception that above all I don't want anyone to think I'm a "believer" and above all not a participant in any evidence-free theology, especially of the Abraham-centered versions. Those folks are willing to kill members of the "competing" religion.

I've long worn my disbelief status with pride and I am very open about my atheism. With that thought, what a wonderful nation in which we live under a Declaration of Independence and a constitution that has the First Amendment enshrined rather than some friendly ghost and I don't mean Casper.